The Hindu Business Line : A seed in the making

WHAT'S top news about seed is `top seed' Davenport recovering to beat Clijsters. But an important development has been reported by http://news.xinhuanet.com. According to the Commission of Science Technology and Industry for National Defence of China, the first `seed satellite' is all set to takeoff, to perform `seed-breeding' in space. It seems seeds and animalcula (or, tiny animals) will be sent into space about 200 to 400 km away from the earth in a recoverable satellite and be exposed to "cosmic radiation, micro-gravity, high vacuum, alternating magnetic field and other special factors to cause useful mutation that is hard to obtain on the earth."

How frightening! So, we come back home, to find the Seeds Bill, 2004, hanging fire in Parliament. The Left has been opposing the Bill for what it perceives as bias towards multinational monopolies gaining hegemony in seed production and distribution. If, following the footsteps of Lao Tzu who said, "To see things in the seed, that is genius," you'd like to see the text of the legislation-in-the-works, visit www.agricoop.nic.in, the site of the Department of Agriculture and Cooperation.

Thus, before the draft law goes to seed, one can catch up with some interesting definitions in the Bill that aims at "regulating the quality of seeds for sale, import and export and facilitating production and supply of seeds of quality."

`Seed' is defined as any type of living embryo or propagule (i.e. any living part of a plant) capable of regeneration and giving rise to a plant. In contrast, `spurious seed' means any seed that is not genuine or true to type. The existing Seeds Act of 1966 defines `seed' elaborately as "any of the following classes of seeds used for sowing or planting: seeds of food crops including edible oil seeds and seeds of fruits and vegetables; cotton seeds; seeds of cattle fodder; and includes seedlings, and tubers, bulbs, rhizomes, roots, cuttings, all types of grafts and other vegetatively propagated material, of food crops or cattle fodder."

In the old Act, `variety' means a sub-division of a kind identifiable by growth, yield, plant, fruit, seed, or other characteristic. The 2004 Bill engages in a lengthy discourse on this word: Variety means "a plant grouping except micro-organism within a single botanical taxon of the lowest known rank, which can be (i) defined by the expression of the characteristics resulting from a given genotype of that plant grouping; (ii) distinguished from any other plant grouping by expression of at least one of the said characteristics; and (iii) considered as a unit with regard to its suitability for being propagated, which remains unchanged after such propagation, and includes propagating material of such variety, extant variety, transgenic variety, farmers' variety and essentially derived variety." Plus, there are footnotes. Tax provisions may seem simpler, for a change.

Nobody thought of `transgenic variety' in good old days. Now, it means, "seed or planting material synthesised or developed by modifying or altering the genetic composition by means of genetic engineering." And `technology' includes "genetic use restriction technology and terminator technology."

While in the 1966 Act, you don't find any talk of `brand' a big section is devoted to what is `misbranded' in the 2004 Bill. "A seed shall be deemed to be misbranded if," begins clause 2(14) and is followed by almost a dozen situations.

Four decades ago, we knew who a farmer was, and so it was perhaps thought okay if he was not defined in the seed law. The 2004 Bill doesn't leave him to chance and so defines a farmer as "any person who cultivates crops either by cultivating the land himself or through any other person but does not include any individual, company, trader or dealer who engages in the procurement and sale of seeds on a commercial basis."

Albert Einstein advised, "Keep on sowing your seed, for you never know which will grow — perhaps it all will." With a transgenic variety, however, the fear is not so much about whether, but how, the seed will grow.

ExParte@TheHindu.co.in

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
The fading pugmarks in tiger land

Loopholes in Tobacco Control Act plugged — Celluloid screens go `smoke-free'

A seed in the making